1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the technical field of computer peripherals and, more particularly, to a method for automatically identifying an operating system for a universal serial bus (USB) device.
2. Description of Related Art
With the rapid development of the internet, it is a trend that a personal computer is used to get online at home. However, a person may not be familiar with the operations of a personal computer and a browser. In this case, the auto-run function of an optical disk drive or flash drive is typically used. When a compact disk is placed into the optical disk drive or the flash drive is plugged into the personal computer, the operating system performs the auto-run function to thereby activate the browser and input a special URL link. Thus, a person such as a child or an elder, who is not familiar with the operations of the personal computer and the browser, can access internet easily.
However, the antivirus software may block such an operation for the security consideration, and accordingly the aforementioned way cannot work. To overcome this, a solution uses a USB device to simulate a keyboard/mouse to thereby output a special key for activating a browser and inputting a special URL link, thereby access internet easily. However, different operating systems have the differently assigned key functions. Accordingly, when a USB device is used to simulate a keyboard/mouse, it may require different firmware for different operating systems. For example, when the “window” key and “L” key are pressed, it indicates an URL link input operation for an Apple MAC operating system and a lock operation for a Microsoft Windows operating system. Since the different operating systems have the differently assigned key functions and the USB device requires designing the different firmware based on the different operating systems, the developing cost is relatively increased. In addition, a user typically requires different USB devices with different operating systems, which further increases the cost of using USB devices and reduces the use convenience.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide an improved method for automatically identifying an operating system on a USB device to mitigate and/or obviate the aforementioned problems.